Graphite - Paperback

by Patricia Frazier (Author)

Patricia Frazier's Graphite is an ode to her grandmother and childhood home, the Ida B. Wells Projects, both which the poet lost to city- and state-sanctioned discrimination. The chapbook investigates loss and gentrification, particularly their effects on black young people from Chicago, whose political movement, resilience, and ability to make celebration after pain, drive these poems.

Author Biography

Filmmaker, activist, and Chicago and National Youth Poet Laureate, Patricia Frazier uses art to express issues of urgency and celebrate young and Black political movements. Her work appears in Chicago Magazine, South Side Weekly, New City Lit 50, Vogue, and has been performed with Apple Inc. at the Library of Congress, Federal Hall and more. She is an organizer with Assata's Daughters, an intergenerational, grassroots organization of women and femme-identifying folks working to deepen, sustain, and escalate the Black Lives Matter movement. A Davis-Putter scholar, she currently studies cinema arts and sciences at Columbia College Chicago.